CAIR VS. Ex-Muslim Anni Cyrus

The Massachusetts chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) sent out a press release last Friday, calling upon the American Legion Nonantum Post 440 in Newton, Massachusetts to cancel an event featuring Aynaz Anni Cyrus, an ex-Muslim from Iran. Cyrus’ crime? She knows too much about Islam, and particularly about the institutionalized mistreatment of women under Islamic law, and isn’t afraid to speak frankly about what she knows.

Said CAIR-MA Executive Director John Robbins: “While every American has the right to free speech – even the kind of bigoted and misinformed speech offered by Ms. Cyrus – credible organizations like the American Legion should not provide platforms that imply approval or offer credibility to hate-filled views.”

CAIR makes similar efforts to shut down any speaker who speaks unwelcome truths about Islam, jihad and Sharia wherever they’re given a mainstream platform, and always claims that these speakers are “bigoted and misinformed.” When applying these labels to Anni Cyrus, however, CAIR runs into a problem: Cyrus was born in Iran and grew up in the Islamic Republic. Not only was she a Muslim, but she experienced Islam in a nation whose government prides itself on its strict application of Sharia rules.

Thus if anyone knows Islam, it’s Anni Cyrus. Her views are just the opposite of “bigoted and misinformed”: they were shaped by her own bitter experience.

To be sure, the CAIR press release contains a list of “inaccurate, defamatory and inflammatory claims about Islam and Muslims” that Cyrus has supposedly made, including:

“Rape is part of Islam.”

“When there is a mosque built in any area. . .it’s a sign of conquest.”

Mosques in America represent “1,200 areas lost to Sharia.”

“Islam is definitely at war against humanity.”

“The reason for the existence of a woman in Islam is that she’s the seducer.”

“It would be a brilliant idea if we put an end to all Islamic teachings in our schools.”

Titles to her online videos include “To Be Raped Under Islam,” “Islam’s Rape Game in Europe” and “The Solution to Stop Islam.”

It is unclear whether Anni Cyrus actually even made these statements, as CAIR provides no source documentation. And true to form, CAIR doesn’t bother to explain why these statements are “inaccurate, defamatory and inflammatory.” It relies on the general public’s ignorance of Islam, intending for uninformed people to see these statements as ridiculous on their face, as well as highly offensive.

Unfortunately for CAIR, however, rape is part of Islam. The Qur’an says that a Muslim man may have sex with his wives and also with “captives of the right hand” (4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6), who are the “spoils of war” (33:50). These are non-Muslim who have been captured and enslaved. Nothing is said about the slave having to consent to this sexual activity. And that means that it is rape, as is the stipulation in Islamic law that a wife is not permitted to refuse sex to her husband for any time at any reason (Ibn Majah 1854).

As for Islam being at war with humanity, the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, said it best. A hadith depicts Muhammad saying: “I have been commanded to fight against people so long as they do not declare that there is no god but Allah, and he who professed it was guaranteed the protection of his property and life on my behalf except for the right affairs rest with Allah.” (Sahih Muslim 30) That means that if people don’t declare that there is no god but Allah, their lives and property are not guaranteed, and can be taken. Is that a war with humanity? It sure sounds like one.

Are mosques in America signs of conquest? A top Muslim Brotherhood operative in the U.S., Mohamed Akram, explained that the Muslim Brotherhood “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

Akram’s directive came in a Muslim Brotherhood memorandum from May 22, 1991 entitled “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America.” This memorandum explained that mosques should be used as centers for the proselytizing and eventual conversion and Islamization of local areas. Is every mosque actively working in this manner? Of course not. But it would be naïve in the extreme to assume that none are.

Keeping people naïve and ignorant about the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat is what CAIR is all about. CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refusedtodenounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements about how Islamic law should be imposed in the U.S. (Ahmad denies this, but the original reporter stands by her story.) CAIR chapters frequently distribute pamphlets telling Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement. CAIR has opposed virtually every anti-terror measure that has been proposed or implemented and has been declared a terror organization by the United Arab Emirates. A CAIR operative recently called for the overthrow of the U.S. government.

Regardless of CAIR’S effort to silence Anni Cyrus, the event went as planned, on Sunday, March 11, thanks to the American Legion’s refusal to bow to an organization as unsavory as CAIR and allow it to dictate who it features as speakers. This is an important push-back against how confused and compromised the American public sphere has become. Anni Cyrus is a courageous and much-needed voice trying to dispel that confusion. She should be heard, without interference from the polite and sinister authoritarians of CAIR.